Category Archives: Culture and Society

For women leading hurried and over-worked urban lives, malls are perhaps more of sanctuaries than merely a collection of shops

The roads leading to malls are choked with activity and traffic. Dolmen, Packages, Centaurus — these are household names and second home to Pakistani urban families.

When experts look at the demographics of those who frequent malls in Pakistani cities, the number of women is much larger than men, an easy double figure apparent even to the common observer. Mall culture has definitely arrived with a bang in Pakistan, and women are the reason why malls are the hub of hustle and bustle.

For people like Mehek Masood, it is simply more convenient to go to a mall as one can find all the brands under one roof. “Malls give us a totally different shopping experience. Not only are they facilitating us in the form of parking but food courts are also a big reason.”

For people like Mehek Masood, it is simply more convenient to go to a mall as one can find all the brands under one roof. “Not only are malls facilitating us in the form of parking but food courts are also a big reason.”

For young working women like her, shopping at a mall is preferable “because I can just hop from one shop to another. Whereas if I visit Zamzama or any other place, not only is it difficult to find parking in all that clutter, but I also feel that I am somehow rushing my buying decision,” says Masood who calls shopping at a mall a “recreational activity”.

Most women would agree that a mall is more than just shopping — it serves as a public space for families and friends in a country where safe and comfortable places are simply not enough. Malls also happen to be air-conditioned, and women, along with children, throng to malls for the comfort of lowered temperatures when mercury rises.

For Rushna Shamsi, a mother of four, it is the place of preference when she thinks of an outing with her children. It’s safer, more convenient, and provides one stop shopping. As a mother of young children it is an ideal choice. “My teenage boy enjoys the food court. My pre-teen girl loves shops with accessories. The toddler fits herself at the play area for kids. I love the food, the shopping, the ambience — all of it. But with kids it does get heavy on the pocket if visits are frequent,” she says, adding that for her the fact that malls provide a hygienic public space is also a factor that ropes her in.

However, looking at it from the perspective of the entrepreneurs and retailers that have shops in malls, women coming to malls might form the largest body of visitors, but are not the most serious buyers.

Ayesha Mansoor, the driving force behind popular brands for women’s clothing — Mausummery and Origins — says that women go to malls for the overall entertainment experience. “They are not serious shoppers. The visitors to shops in malls that come in are usually there for an outing or an eating spree. Malls are becoming popular as entertainment spots. Eating, grocery or even just window shopping are the main attractions,” she says, adding that retail sales are not doing well in malls due to high overheads. When asked why all brands still have shops in malls, her answer is simple: “to have brand presence”.

Not all women are fans of the trending mall culture. One such woman is Beena Imran. “In my opinion, with the busy lives that we lead nowadays, going to a mall is nothing but a waste of time unless you have nothing better to do. If I know what I want, and have jotted it down, I’d rather go to an individual shop than going through the hassle of reaching a mall, spending a good 15-20 minutes in reaching my desired shop and mostly not getting what I went for in the first place,” she says.

Yet, even women like her who are not big on malls acknowledge the reasons why malls are becoming popular. “They provide a recreational place for people from all walks of life. Some of them just go to the mall to sit and kill time. It may be a source of happiness for them and could help them forget their worries or problems in a lively atmosphere.”

For women leading hurried and over-worked urban lives, then, malls are perhaps more of sanctuaries than merely a collection of shops.

There has to be more to Eid than that stash of money the child tucks away.

Anybody who has grown up in Pakistan recognises that pretty lifafa (envelope) in pastel colours or in whites, embellished or plain, sometimes with just a name, at other times with loads of prayers written carefully. Inside, the coveted crisp notes and the smell of the currency printing press chemicals.

These notes give many a banker sleepless nights during the last two weeks of Ramazan, as clients are ready to both beg and intimidate bank officials for fresh notes. Fifty ya 100 walay(ones). Five hundred walay. 1,000 walay. Even 5,000 walay if the family is upper tier.

Getting eidi is the one time when we all enjoy feeling young because every one of us is younger than someone for the most part of our lives. When all those hands that used to give us eidi, thekhala, nani and phupha are long gone, it starts to get lonely at the top.

While gifts are a part of Islamic culture and the exchange of gifts is encouraged in Prophetic traditions, eidi is a very specifically cultural manifestation of that in our region. It is that time of the year which children look forward to. As an expression of love and blessings from elders, it is a beautiful gesture.

But over time, something about eidi has changed. As purely money is involved, we see a certain materialism tainting this cultural tradition. The children of today are smarter than their yesteryear counterparts. They are not as interested in the wishes written on the lifafa. What they are interested in is the ceremonial adaab(salutation),and then running in a corner and quietly opening a bit of the envelope to peak in and see whether the currency is red, blue, or reddish-orange.

But then again, children are a reflection of what they observe their parents doing. Many parents, if not all, also take their child in the corner, ask what a certain relative gave, and return the money accordingly. The gesture has become more of a barter system.

While there is nothing wrong with enjoying the money we collect from elders, and it is in fact endearing to see children counting the money they get as eidi as an extended form of spending money, it is not in good spirit if that is all that the children are looking at.

The lifafa culture and this desire to ‘earn’ more has entered many a religious ceremonies. The Aameen ceremony(completion of the Holy Quran) and the Roza kushai(the first time a child fasts) have also become similar occasions where the focus has shifted from prayers and duas to money. The fault does not only lie with parents and children expecting eidi, as those at the giving end are too busy to go and buy gifts. Also, the eidi or lifafa usually cost less than the gift itself.

While money is a reality of life, such customs and attitudes of parents subliminally condition children to gauge people by monetary standards too soon. It is important to keep reminding the child that the one who could afford to give Rs100 only gave it with as much affection as someone who gave Rs1,000. There has to be more to Eid than that stash of money the child tucks away.

Instilling the right values on Eid may prove to be a challenge for parents. It is doable. But for that, attitudes of the parents would have to be up to the mark as well. Because when it comes to children, it is the parents that set the tone.

“People who saw the video liked the spot where it was shot on the Seaview beach. They still come to me, requesting to shoot a similar video of them at the same spot,” says 28-years-old Basheer Muhammad, one of the citizens of Karachi who was part of videos shot as part of the Mera Karachi Mobile Cinema (MKMC) project.

The project used a rickshaw powered projector to show cell phone videos in diverse neighbourhoods where the videos were made. Basheer was the community coordinator for the screenings at Seaview. For Basheer who makes a living by photographing tourists along the Seaview beach, being part of a video project was something that left not just fond memories but a sense of ownership about his city. These outdoor screenings were free of cost and were held in various parts of Karachi, thereby creating an archive of cell phone videos about everyday life of Karachiites.

“This project was not a political reportage. We were not trying to be native informants. This project gathered Karachiite’s spaces and moments of leisure in the city,” says Yaminay Nasir Chaudhri, the key person behind MKMC. Mera Karachi Mobile Cinema was a way of engaging with different publics, explains Chaudhri. “We wanted to change the relationship of people to media. Normally the people we met and worked with were consumers of the media, but did not get to produce it themselves. In MKMC, they had a chance to make media and if they wanted to, to represent themselves.” The approach was participatory.

The MKMC team would teach basic video making and editing techniques using cell phones. Members of the community became collaborators and a part of the creative process. They could, for example, express their choice for music or particular scenes they liked in the videos they made, and want the MKMC team to fine tune that. “We would work on it together. It was a very important aspect of the project to create a sense of ownership and agency over the images we put out in the world,” says Chaudhri.

Karachi is a melting pot of different ethnicities, languages and cultures. This series of videos, though limited in number, were aimed at being snapshots into life of Karachiites from all walks of life. They were produced in response to the question “Home: What did you do last Sunday?” A Mobile Cinema Rickshaw carried around the projector that projected these videos on walls of houses, railway bogies and buildings, added another dimension to it that is typical to life in Karachi.

Karachi is a melting pot of different ethnicities, languages and cultures. This series of videos, though limited in number, were aimed at being snapshots into life of Karachiites from all walks of life. They were produced in response to the question “Home: What did you do last Sunday?”

The project celebrated the life and times of Karachiites, and created a new use of public spaces. This was a use of art that was not a luxury for the elite – it was by the people and for the people.

The MKMC team was headed by Yaminay Chaudhri. Other team members included Cyrus Viccaji, Sadia Khatri, Mohammad Saddique Khan, Khadija Abdul Lateef, Krishna Raju and Farhad Mirza.

Areas that were covered included Ibrahim Haidery, Lyari, Cantt Station and Seaview. Karachi’s migrant communities were also focused upon. Some of them have been living in the city since decades but still do not have legal status here. The videos, simple at a glance, were conceptually layered, tapping into complex themes like identity and ownership. Both regular and irregular settlements were tapped into.

Vernacular aesthetics and tools were used in this project. The rhythm of the city was important. These videos were not made for an international audience, which helped deliver a more fluid and organic narrative. “Often when films or documentaries are made for a global audience, producers end up orientalising, objectifying and exoticising Pakistan, resorting to stereotypes about terrorism, and over simplification of people based on ethnicities,” explains Chaudhri.

“MKMC is an incredibly diverse and inclusive project. It’s so beautiful how it’s rooted deeply in Karachi and its inhabitants, building a poignant and personal archive of all the vulnerable and aspirational relationships we have with the city, its public spaces and communities,” says Abeera Kamran, a graphic designer and web developer who worked on the website of Tentative Collective. She adds that it’s so rare to find artists that are committed to such collaborative intersectional work.

The screening of videos in MKMC created an alternative narrative in public spaces. The screenings fostered new kinds of conviviality in these neighbourhoods and leftover spaces of the city. In Lyari, in one screening, some 300 people, mostly women and children, came together on an empty parking lot and street in the middle of Baghdadi. “Our gatherings never used security apparatus and we never had any problems. The feeling of community and desire to be in a public space together doing something fun was a kind of organiser in itself,” says Chaudhri.

MKMC made an effort to hire a few people from each neighbourhood they engaged with as community leaders. They offered salaries to the ones who wanted salaries and support in other ways to those who were insulted by the offer of money. The project took one year to plan and ran for three years. It involved applying for grants, crowd sourcing, personal savings and getting funding from friends.

The second phase of the project, still underway, involves the showing of previously unshared parts of MKMC, a documentation of the process, and analysing what the team learnt from it. According to Chaudhri, the MKMC team wants to look at what gets deleted, what is deemed screen worthy and what is not. As artists working with new collaborators, they also want to decipher what it was that they saw in these engagements with unlikely friends.

As often happens, lack of funds eventually became a reason why the project had to be discontinued. “We got offers to turn this project into a brand, and were offered funding from dubious sources, but we turned it down. It was important to us that the agendas of funding bodies were not reflected in the outcomes of our project. That would defeat the purpose of making a project like this with its open-ended outcomes and flexibility of programming,” says Chaudhri, adding that by the end of the project, the structure of the videos had changed dramatically based on the groups they met and their desire to make media a certain way. “The project went in all of those directions happily. With big funding, branding, and foreign agendas, none of that would have been possible.”

MKMC was a project of the “Tentative Collective” — a collective of people who share resources to create critical works of art in public places. The Tentative Collective is currently working on a project exploring some of the outcomes of modernity and development, working with literal and metaphorical notions of waste and wasted lives.

The recently held Karachi Literature Festival 2017 was a hub alright. But a hub of what? What it stands for, ideally, is not just celebrating books and authors, but also to serve as a hub for Pakistan’s beautiful minds that allow critical thinking and are truly progressive. Literature and the arts, on such forums, are designed to allow an open inflow and outflow of thoughts and ideas, and an exchange of not just narrative but also counter narrative.

One counterfoil session of the KLF 2017 was introduced as a discussion on conflict-resolution through art and enterprise. One of Pakistan’s well known musicians dared to play a short video as a tribute to the late Pakistani pop icon-turned-evangelist Junaid Jamshed, and went on to talk about how he and Junaid, despite ideological differences, managed to remain lifelong friends, and worked in collaboration on projects pertaining to peace-building. The reaction of a renowned “liberal and progressive” scholar on the panel was perhaps not unexpected but certainly unwarranted. He ridiculed Junaid Jamshed’s long beard and dressing style, and then went on to comment on his alleged misogyny. The comments were not just out of context. They were a giveaway of something that we don’t talk about often enough, which is that when it comes to “liberalism”, Pakistanis seem to have lost the plot.

Most dictionaries define a “liberal” in words as these: Someone who is open to new behaviour or opinions and willing to discard traditional values; lacking moral restraint; tolerant to change; a moderate person or viewpoint that favours a society or social code less restrictive than the current one, and welcomes constructive change in approaches to solving economic, social, and other problems.

The irony of ironies is that the very things liberalism stands against – being judgmental, being inflexible and being rigid – are the very traps we see liberals falling into. Liberal thought is, in essence, the anti-thesis of extremism and fundamentalism. It is the willingness to burst bubbles, push boundaries, and think out of boxes. True liberalism is having the heart to listen open-mindedly to an opposing view point, even though you may disagree vehemently.

Pakistan, today, is in desperate need of truly liberal people who may have their own set of beliefs, yet are willing to hear the other side out, and engage in dialogue. The intelligentsia, as it consists of more evolved people, has on it the responsibility of building bridges. Instead, what we are seeing on both sides is deep intolerance. The religious are seen indulging in feel-good extremism, and write off those who don’t follow religion in exactly the way they interpret it. For that, they get the flack which is perhaps justified. But it is less painful because the right-wingers never really claim to be open-minded. It hits worse when those who claim to be progressive and liberal follow the same patterns. Ironically, many of them, if not all, end up being equally intolerant of dissenting viewpoints, if not more.

Puritanical thinking makes one feel holier-than-thou (and this holds true for both the left and the right, for both the religious and the secular), plugs our ears to voices of those we see as “the others”, and perpetuates a binary world view, leading to the “it is either my way or the high way” attitude.

For cases in point, one should skim through social media websites. The easiest and laziest thing to do is put blanket generalisations on groups of people – something we are becoming very good at. Common assumptions are that a bearded man or a hijabi woman cannot be a human rights activist, a peace-builder or one raising their voice against domestic violence. Equally common are counterpart assumptions that a woman donning a sleeveless shirt or a man who is in the music or showbiz industry lack in faith.

Sneering at the opposite camps might get one some additional readers and followers, or a few guffaws from a chisel-headed audience that wants to enjoy the comfort of collaborative mockery. But what many of our brightest minds end up looking like is eternal teenagers and wandering Peter Pans who imagine the world as a virtual university town where everyone must conform to thinking in a certain way.

This is not to undermine the contributions KLF and similar forums are making. It is just that by default, events that act as magnets to the urban elite seem less welcoming to those who differ socially or ideologically.

We are all living in our ideological silos, comfortable in our respective bubbles with our own sets of designated cheerleaders. No one wants to try understanding another point of view. We sing praises of a word called “empathy” when we have not even arrived at the station of “tolerance”. We spare neither the living, nor the dead. And through it all, we see ourselves as the problem-solvers when we, ourselves, are part of the problem of polarisation. How, then, can any of us claim to be liberal?

If Pakistan truly wants to get rid of extremism, there will have to be more open-minded listening, especially listening to those who are not on the same page as you, without jesting about or being dismissive of the other point of view.

Farahnaz is a writer and editor, and has worked as the Features Editor with The Express Tribune. Her focus is human-centric feature stories. She now writes as a freelancer, and works in the field of corporate communications. She loves literature and traveling. She tweets @FarahnazZahidi. Her work can be seen at chaaidaani.wordpress.com/

The art of storytelling

Eons ago, people had all the time in the world to nurture the art of listening. Long before the printing press was invented, and later the worldwide web that transmuted into e-books and digital books, narratives were recited and literature was spoken. The Hamzanama, or the Dastan e Ameer Hamza, was one of the many such works of literature that told fantastic tales of the many ventures of Ameer Hamza. Ameer Hamza’s companion Amar Ayyaar (also called Umro Ayyaar) had a bag called a Zambeel that contained all that that is in the world but the Zambeel would never be filled. The magical Zambeel, hence, could produce objects that would be core subjects of many a dastan.

But that was then and this is now. Princess Scherezade could no longer have bartered her life for tales she told as part of her Alif Laila repertoire, for no one has a thousand and one seconds to spare, let alone A Thousand and One Nights. Yet, there is a present day version of the Zambeel that has been successful in its attempts at reviving the tradition of dastangoi, or storytelling as we may call it today. Enter the Zambeel Dramatic Readings, and see a modern day semblance of this ancient art. For even if for a brief period of time, this will take you into a world where Urdu literature is read out to you the way it should be.

Zambeel Dramatic Readings came into being in early 2011 when a group of three friends — Asma Mundrawala, Mahvash Faruqi and Saife Hasan — was requested by a friend to read out a story in a gathering. “We embellished it with music. The response was what made us initiate and realise Zambeel,” says Mundrawala, a visual artist and theatre practitioner who is one of the key people behind this initiative. Zambeel Dramatic Readings was founded with a view to present texts from Urdu literature in a dramatised form to a live audience, and has mainly targeted adult audiences, but has also ventured into readings for children during the last three years.

“We aim to present texts rendered in their dramatised form, to create a dynamic collusion between literature and performance. Referencing traditions of storytelling and the contemporary form of the radio play, our works traverse time and geographical boundaries to interpret and enliven narratives through sound and recitation,” says Mundrawala.

“In an age where the purists were fearful of the fading away of correct pronunciation and nuanced delivery of Urdu, the Zambeel team has bridged the gap between the older generation and younger one by introducing this genre to them.”

Mahvash Faruqi is an educator with a background in theatre, and Saife Hasan is a performing arts practitioner particularly known for his acting.

What begun with writings from Ismat Chughtai’s rich repertoire, the group has since inception presented many projects comprising stories in both English and Urdu by authors that include Quratulain Hyder, Saadat Hasan Manto, Masood Mufti, Afsan Chowdhury, Raihana Hasan, Ashraf Suboohi, Asif Farrukhi, Munshi Premchand, Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Naiyer Masud. Of late, more contemporary writers’ works are also being included into the repertoire, like Asad Muhammad Khan, Ghulam Abbas and Zamiruddin Ahmed.

“Zambeel readings have reintroduced the cultural tradition of dastangoi. The selection and the delivery has the audience in raptures,” says journalist and literature aficionado Afia Salam. “In an age where the purists were fearful of the fading away of correct pronunciation and nuanced delivery of Urdu, the Zambeel team has bridged the gap between the older generation and younger one by introducing this genre to them.”

Mundrawala affirms that while initially the audience mainly comprised only of Urdu literature enthusiasts, over time the younger generation has also begun frequenting the readings. “We now have audiences who have read the stories and also those who have not read the stories. The younger lot may not understand Urdu with facility yet they come.”

Fahad Naveed, a visual artist and long form writer, is one of Zambeel’s young audience members. “I’ve been following Zambeel for a few years now and greatly admire their work. Their readings make Urdu literature approachable and exciting for varied audiences. I’m particularly drawn in by the group’s use of sound; often sitting on a table, they are able to transport the audience with just their dialogue delivery and a few sound effects and audio cues,” he says.

Also reviving the tradition initiated by grandmothers of the region to read out stories to children, Zambeel now also caters to a younger audience, enthralling both parents and children. One such fan of these readings is Saima Harris, an optometrist and mother of a seven-year-old.

“Our experience of Zambeel’s dramatic readings was Tipu aur Jaadu ki Bayl, an Urdu narration of my son’s favorite Jack and the Beanstalk. The audience was predominantly the English-speaking ‘Burger’ primary-schoolers of Karachi (who tend to shy away from the Urdu language), and their very keen parents,” she says, adding the dramatic and interactive Urdu narration, interspersed with toe-tapping melodies, brought a traditional English childhood classic to life. “It is a step aside from the all-important but solitary reading from a book or the mind-numbing watching on a screen. There is immeasurable potential here to both entertain and educate.”

Artist Rumana Husain, who is known for solo readings for children and production of quality Urdu literature for children, says it is rare nowadays to have literary readings in the country read in a dramatic fashion, and is all praise for the initiative.

Zambeel performers imbue texts with a poignant expressive quality and perform narratives that are supported by a soundscape, enriching the aural experience of the audience through sound and recitation, explains Mundrawala. “While we are three core members, we have had many actor friends work with us by lending their voice and acting talents to our projects. Their contributions have enriched our works and we are privileged to have had so many actors, as well as designers, artists, and musicians collaborate with us.”

The team has recently initiated an audio platform of readings once a month on the YouTube channel, Zambeelnaama.

A Pakistani vendor arranges morning newspapers with front-page-coverage of the attack by gunmen on French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris, at a roadside newsstand in Islamabad. PHOTO: AFP

You know, therefore you are.

And we know because of the press. Be it print or broadcast, media is what keeps you updated. It provides us with information because it is our right to know, and it is the press’ right to relay that information.

The press, or a more relevant term today might be the media (that includes products of both print as well as broadcast and digital journalism) relay that information to you.

But, if you are a Pakistani and have never been a part of the media, never seen the workings of a newsroom and have never been a reporter, it is a given that you are someone who has hurled abuses, chanted frustrated expletives and blamed the media and press for everything that has gone wrong in the world.

The headlines can be scandalous and out of context. The reporters and TV anchors cross lines. Media ethics are ripped apart every time a tragedy takes place, where cameras are thrust in the faces of victims and survivors. Information is relayed first and thought about later.

While print media (newspapers), exercises much more care and caution compared to TV, the web wing of newspapers is another animal altogether. News has to be broken within minutes otherwise it becomes redundant and stale. “It’s already been covered” is the worst nightmare in the web room. To make their story novel and different, value additions are pushed through and the ‘treatment’ of the story is altered to get more hits.

Journalists are paid a pittance, especially if they are in print media, and those that write in a local language are paid even less. The one thrill that keeps them going is the sheer joy of being able to tell a story or create awareness while taking the credit for it; their name or face appearing with the news story. And for this, they risk their lives.

With every passing day, our viewers, readers and listeners are also becoming less forgiving. A decade ago, we could have gotten away with shoddy and loud journalism by saying,

The initial euphoria of freedom after an era of being the proverbial “press in chains” has now begun to die down. Which means the media will not be able to get away with anything and everything. Also, mistakes made by the media, like everyone else, can become a social media trend within minutes. Whether the media person was right or wrong, how they should be dealt with is another debate.

But if media persons ask politician’s scandalous questions, storm into assemblies, do moral policing of dating couples in parks, or show unreasonable tilts towards an ideology or person, they cannot go scot-free. Writers and reporters should not be allowed to base entire stories on hypothetical sources and should not be allowed to share data without citations. Today’s media is grilled and criticised. If nothing else, the social media trial will take them to task.

And it must.

The absence of a check and balance corrupts anyone in a position of power, and one of the most powerful positions to be in is as a media person. What we say, show or write reaches millions. We, the media, are answerable.

Yet, as the world today celebrates the 250th Press Freedom Day, is Pakistani media really free?

What we know as ‘policy matters’ and ‘security concerns’ often hold back the pen or the microphone of the reporter to relay information that must reach the public. Certain ideas are shot down by editors due to fear of backlash and ruffling too many feathers, and then we wonder why our best journalists end up writing for foreign publications and not local ones.

Fears of consequences, tilts and allegiances of patrons, the editor’s discretionary powers to chop or discard a good pitch or story and the simple fear of becoming unpopular or redundant, often hold a journalist back from the noble task of telling the truth, and nothing but the truth.

In a world where surveillance of citizens is legally accepted, why should a media person’s right to ask questions be curtailed?

While absolutism in freedom of speech can be harmful, strict censorships harm a society by not only restricting, but mutating the development of healthy collective thought processes.

The annual report of press freedom by media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) stated that Pakistan has been ranked 159 out of 180 countries. Yet, these restrictions are not just limited to Pakistan as the world at large is failing on many counts when it comes to providing press the required freedom.

In an era plagued with conflict, fear of life is what causes us, the media persons, to bite our tongues and throw away our pens.

The need of the day is to educate our press and media persons regarding media ethics, but at the same time, their safety should be safeguarded while ensuring that they can speak up without fear of losing their audience, their jobs or their lives.

The houses look almost uniform in design in the upper tier areas of this city of 23 million. Tall walls veil the view of the facades of these houses that are for Karachi’s high life. A lot of gray is visible with people tilting towards less use of paints.
The design lines are simpler, less complicated in Karachi compared to counterparts in Lahore and Islamabad. Architecture is definitely evolving in residential Karachi. But the design is controlled by the owner and not the architect. And the purpose of building these grand structures is less about building a home and more about what people will think, leaving Karachi’s architects disgruntled.
“Today’s architecture is just glamorous experiments but nothing substantial is being done. There is no serious architectural experiment in Pakistan presently. It is just gimmickry. People may have become savvier about hiring architects to design the house but a freehand is not given to the architect,” says Mukhtar Husain, a senior architect who feels that most people build houses simply to show off. “It is an activity for noveau riche.”
Renowned architect Shahid Abdulla’s views are aligned with Husain’s. “We as a nation are dirty. We don’t know how to live well and we don’t build houses with practicality and maintenance in mind. We build houses as showcases. Sprawling lawns are made to impress people but no one sits in them anymore,” he says, explaining why architects are today preferring courtyards and paved areas, instead of lawns in a parched Karachi that receives very little rain.

Luckily, Karachi’s residences are easier to maintain. “Architecture in Karachi basically consists of reinforced concrete. There is no rain in Karachi which makes the maintenance much easier,” says Habib Fida Ali, one of Pakistan’s most famous architects and the man who designed LUMS.
He discusses architecture with zeal, with Zaha Hadid being mentioned as a great personality and Fida Ali’s friend.
While the world celebrates the great Ms Hadid’s work and pays her tributes, Husain sees Pakistan’s architectural scene as pretty stagnant. “No Pakistani architect gets any international awards. It’s not that Pakistani architects are not capable of better works but there is not enough opportunity to do better work when the owner dictates what we design. The signature work of any architect is no longer recognisable.”
“It’s not that architects are not capable of better works but there is not enough opportunity to do better work when the owner dictates what we design.
For architects like Abdulla, economy and nature play a very important part of the design. “My focus when designing is to make a house economical. When a proper architect is not used, the focus of owners is that the house should not appear a poor man’s house. It’s like giving a child makeup to beautify; overkill of materials makes the house less becoming,” he says.
Houses designed by Abdulla are known to be very different. “We use cement, less of marble but try and use more stone. Nature is very important to me. My houses are easy maintenance. On a stone floor falling leaves still look good. A house should look like a home. It should look lived in and after twenty years it should look prettier when the trees you planted when you built the house are now all grown up. Natural light and plants are never old fashioned,” he says, expressing displeasure over the trend of imported trees. “It’s time to go back to indigenous and fruit trees. I am very conscious of the environment-friendly aspect of design. I like to create small water bodies.”
For the more aware house owners, like Humera Kamran, the element of nature is supremely important, as is practicality.

“I did not want a house that I become a servant to due to maintenance needs. So practicality was very important to me,” she says. She has recently moved into her new home which is a labour of love for her. “Three elements are very important in my house; light, air and plantation. At any given time during the day, I don’t need to switch on a light at any place in my house. I had electricity conservation in my mind and wanted to stay as close to nature as possible. The patio in the centre of the house is our hub. That is where we sit in the evenings surrounded by plants. I have not used any grills in my house. We have used tempered glass.”
Abdulla feels upbeat when asked to compare the architectural scene in Karachi and other urban centres. “Karachi’s architecture is evolving very well. Lahore as a city still cannot appreciate simple architecture. Karachiites are more practical,” he says, mentioning that one positive change is that architects like himself take it upon themselves to use less paint. “Look at the Indus Valley School. I left it in concrete block and twenty four years later it still looks good.”
But Husain does not see any difference in the urban architecture of Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad. “The same trends are being followed everywhere. It’s just that in Karachi, due to security reasons, the walls are very high so the street fronts look very drab because facades of houses are no longer visible though people still spend money on them. Yes, there are more sun roofs but that is not for an environmental concern, but is just another trend,” he says, adding that environmental sustainability is not a concern for clients which is very frustrating for the architect. “My advice to people building a house is that don’t just put in your money but also put in your mind.”